How to Measure Engagement

My classmate Edie showed me a very interesting article from Taiwan about ubiquitous learning.  The idea behind it is that learning is everywhere and the more we can guide students to take advantage of the whole range of opportunity out in the world the better.  In order to document this experience and to keep track of the students (I think they actually tracked them on GPS) mobile devices were used extensively.  In the literature review the work on student engagement was analysed and parameters documented.  The researchers decided to use four parameters that were common in the most "important" work of Jonassen (1995), Karppinen (2005) and Grabe& Grabe (2007).  They found students were most engaged when the learning was active, authentic, constructive and cooperative.  Huang and his group then created a table to show the characteristics of each U-Learning computer based technology and how they could be used to capitalize on these needs.
Some sample survey documents are included in the appendix of the paper.

Hall, G., Heavin, E., McKay, J., Richardson J., Whittleton, P. (2012)  Building bridges:  an interdisciplinary inquiry approach.  Unpublished Design Brief presented to Inquiry and Technology (EDER 779.02) class. 

Huang, Y.-M., Chiu, P.-S., Liu, T.-C., & Chen, T.-S. (2011). The design and implementation of a meaningful learning-based evaluation method for ubiquitous learning. Computers & Education, 57(4), 2291-2302. Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2011.05.023

Scaffolding Activities for Design Briefs

Just playing around as part of background work to our Bridges design brief I wondered how long it would take to come up with a 2 dimensional scale model of a Popsicle stick that students could manipulate on the SMART board as part of their building inquiry process.  I thought I would just be able to download and modify a ready-made lesson from the SMART Exchange.  Surprise!

No Popsicle sticks in the image Gallery!
Well that's no problem, I'll just make one.  Easier said than done.  I really had to think about what I wanted to do and how to do it.
The lesson in this is that when you are designing engaging lessons you may need to scaffold the activity for teachers as well as for students.  The process of creation - in this case it took me at least half an hour to come up with an excellent Popsicle stick that we can now infinitely clone - is both frustrating and exhilarating, however teachers just do not have time to be bogged down with inventing every little technical detail.  Enough help needs to be given at strategic points to ensure there will be some momentum to the learning process.
In working with any new technological tool learners will go through a period of awkwardness, and Wertime (1979) as referenced in the Scardamalia et all White Paper coaches us to be learner-centered enough to keep students working through this phase and increase their "courage-spans".

Scardamalia, M., Bransford, J., Kozma, B. & Qyekknakzm, E. (2010).  White Paper 4:  New assessments   and evironments for knowledge building.  ATCS:  Assessment & Teaching of 21st Century Skills.  Draft White Papers.  Regrieved June 10, from http://www.atc21s.org/GetAssets.axd? FilePath=/Assets/Files/294f3563-71d2-9308-cc60dffe3914.pdf.

Universal Design for Learning at UOIT

Today in class I listened to Marj show John the website created at University of Ontario Intitute of Technology to raise awareness about new initiatives in accessiblity.  The site helps satisfy the requirements of new legislation in Ontario and it is also good educational practice.  Later she showed it to Sharon, and then to the whole class.  I was struck by how what is good for students with disabilities is good for all learners, and at how much sense the principles behind Universal Design for Learning are.  As a guide for faculty it was very effective as it shows how open and transparent the process of ensuring accessible learning can be.  What a great example of using technology to improve the learning community. Thanks for sharing, Marj.

http://apa.uoit.ca/accessibility/

Fire!

Yesterday evening the fire alarm went off at the apartment building where I was staying.  It reminded me of the time I spent in my nightgown in the residence parking lot at UVic during my master's program many years ago when their alarms chronically malfunctioned.  The difference in the connected technological world of today compared to then was obvious to me in my response to the alarm. With just my iPad I was able to continue with my reading and note taking and didn't have to worry about losing any of my work, since I can access my drop box, which lives in the cloud as far as I can tell, from anywhere.

Top 47 Hit Parade

Today I read an interesting article on Design-Based Research which tied in to the part of the discusssion we had in class about how Google Scholar displays the number of times an article has been cited.  The article did give summary statistics on the disciplines and curricular focus of 47 articles as well as the major results which were cautiously optimistic about DBR.  The authors - Anderson and Shattuck - used Google Scholar to select which articles to review.

Anderson, T & Shattuck, J. (2012).  Design-based research:  A decade of progress in education research? Educational Researcher 2012 41:  16  DOI: 10.3102/0013189X11428813

The online version of this article can be found at
http://edr.sagepub.com/content/41/1/16

An Inquiry and Technology Alphabet

Ok, Gang:  Here you go.  I did the first six, is that my fair share?  The rest is up to you.  I must admit I was tempted to start at V is for Vygotsky!

A is for Anderson, Terry by name;  Technology learning from Athabasca his game.

B is for Bruckman in communities online; Beetham and Britain both big on design.

C is a Carnegie unit, productive we’ll be; switch it all up before boredom you’ll see.

D is diSessa, conceptual change the research; if you learn this you’ll be safe as a church

E is for e-learning the reason is clear - if it wasn't for that we wouldn't be here.
F is for Friesen, don’t forget about her; true inquiry-based learning will just make her purr.

At What Price?

The "next new thing" just jumped out and bit me - the SMART LightRaise 40 wi Interactive Projector!  While looking for interactive math lessons on the Smart Exchange website, there it was - a projector that does everything a SMART Board does, only you don't need a SMART Board!  Technically there might not be a downside, since it costs about the same as a wide-screen interactive whiteboard, namely about $1600.  This would indeed be "just the ticket" for meeting spaces like libraries and larger lecture areas and it claims to have the same "active-interactive" capabilities.  Plus for organizations that are interested in getting quick implementation you wouldn't have to wait for the maintenance trio of electrician, carpenter and network technician to show up synchronously or asynchronously to install it.

Of course it is what you do with the technology you have that provides quality learning experiences, but it is great when the technology end of the equation is reliable and non-intrusive.

http://smarttech.com/lightraise